BRAND IT LIKE BECKHAM ...

In 1877 "The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club" was founded, which saw the start of a competition which was to become the most prestigious within tennis circles. The rules for the game have remained almost unchanged since that time. The only event to feature in the first competition was the "Gentlemen’s singles" and it was won by Spencer Gore. The event attracted a meagre 200 spectators who paid one shilling to watch the spectacle. In 1884 "Ladies singles" was introduced and was won by Maud Watson. Wimbledon these days attracts world wide attention and the singles winner in 2010 won £1,000,000, with the runner up receiving £500,000.

In 1863 "The England Football Association" was founded. The early game was chaotic and riotous. Amazingly it was nine years later that the size and weight of the football were standardised. In 1872 the FA cup was founded which was the first football competition in the world. In 1904 FIFA was founded in Paris and had only 7 membres, these days it has 208 members. In the 1930’s Stanley Rous established the modern day rules . Without doubt football attracts world wide attention and the star players like David Beckham earn huge salaries. Mr Beckham is set to earn $32.5 million in 5 years. This figure does not include any sponsorship deals.

Similarly, The Olympic Games started humbly and has become one of the most important sporting events in the world. The Ancient games started in 776BC and was held at Olympia in Greece every 4 years until 393 AD when it was revoked by Emporer Theodius. In those days it had religious significance. The games were restored on 24 March 1896 in Athens Greece, with the function being to encourage "sound mind in a sound body" and to foster good relations between nations. The games are still held every 4 years with winter sports and summer sports staggered. The next summer games will be held in 2012 in the UK. The men and women who obtain olympic medals portray positive images which companies often use to promote their products. Following the record performance of UK athletes in Beijing, sponsorship and marketing experts claim that leading companies will be jostling to secure endorsement deals. Steve Martin, who has represented the England footballers David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, says “People don’t understand how much these guys could actually make.. The potential is simply huge now, particularly because we have the Olympics on our doorstep. Big brands are going to be falling over themselves because these people are such good ambassadors for their sports. And we are going to be obsessed with the Olympics for four years.” Mr Martin singled out Chris Hoy, who won three cycling gold medals. He said that Mr Hoy could earn at least £1 million before the next Games.

There are, of course, many reasons why a firm would choose to use a sports celebrity like Mr Hoy to promote its brands, for example, consumers are believed to be more likely to choose brands endorsed by celebrities, and sports celebrities, in particular. Practitioners in the field speak about “celebrity-audience and celebrity-product” match up. This is particularly relevant where the celebrity association enhances the existing “brand” eg brand Beckham which features Motorola and Armani products or a sport drink that has an obvious link when used by celebrity athletes. Gatorade, for example, uses Michael Jordan, the basketball player.

Payments to celebrity sportsmen and women have reached epic proportions. Thus, the case of Tiger Woods is interesting because it throws up all the extremes of the “sports celebrity endorsement” market. Tiger Woods earns roughly $100 million annually in endorsement in-come, an amount far greater than that earned by any other athlete. Prior to November 2009, Mr. Woods’ total 2009 endorsement income was estimated to be roughly $100 million, a figure roughly twice as large as that for any other athlete. While the details of most of his endorsement contracts are private, the most valuable contracts are believed to be with Accenture, Gillette, Nike, PepsiCo (Gatorade) and Electronic Arts (EA). Those generate approximately $80-90 million in annual income for Tiger Woods.

On the evening of November 27, 2009, Mr. Woods was involved in a car crash outside his home. Following the crash, a series of news reports about both the crash and Mr. Woods’ personal life damaged his public reputation and several endorsers either stopped featuring him in their advertisements or dropped him outright.

Tiger Woods’ sponsors responded in a variety of ways so it would appear that, in the age of the omnipotent media manager, sponsors may be prepared to take a longer view of a sport star’s human failings where the celebrity is a true megastar. Whilst Accenture and Tag Heuer announced that they would be dropping their sponsorships, Gillette and Gartorade only limited Mr Woods’ role in future advertising and Nike and EA Sports confirmed that they would continue their sponsorship.

In similar vein, we have the case of Wayne Rooney. Rooney earns more than £2.5million a year from his four key sponsors - Harper Collins, Nike, EA Sports and Coca-Cola. Reacting to recent allegations about his private life, the England player’s four main sponsors said these were ’private matters’ and they would not drop him - despite the fact that parents’ groups had called for them to end the footballer’s lucrative contracts because, as a role model, “he had set an ’appalling’ example to children”.

Evidence suggests that advertising practitioners historically placed high importance on avoiding negative publicity. The case of Mr Woods and Mr Rooney may illustrate the limitations on the power of the media manager at the final frontier of the universe of the sports megastars – albeit, these episodes are still being studied, no doubt, by marketeers and advertisers and sports stars and their agents for their real significance. In the meantime, Mr Woods and his fellow sports celebrities ride fortune’s wave.